cnn
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In her more than 27 years of marriage to Rex Heuermann, Asa Ellerup probably didn't know about the gruesome double life her husband is accused of, says Suffolk County's top cop.
“If you ask me, I don't think they knew about this double life that Mr. Heuermann was living,” Suffolk County Police Commissioner Rodney Harrison said of the suspect's family.
But authorities are not ruling anything out yet and continue to gather information “to see if the family could have known exactly what Mr. Heuermann was doing,” Harrison told CNN's Erica Hill in a July 2023 interview.
That month, Heuermann was arrested and charged with murder in connection with the murders of three of the “Gilgo Four,” a group of four women whose remains were found along a short stretch of Gilgo Beach on Long Island in 2010. Also was identified as the main suspect in the disappearance and murder of the fourth woman, Maureen Brainard-Barnes, who was 25 years old when she was last seen. He was charged with her murder in January and pleaded not guilty.
Heurmann, 60, is expected to be indicted on a new murder charge this week in a New York court, according to CNN affiliate WCBS.
Less than a week after her husband's arrest, Ellerup filed for divorce, her lawyer, Robert Macedonio, told CNN. She did not comment further on the matter.
She was shocked to hear what her husband is accused of, Harrison said.
But she unknowingly played a key role in her husband's arrest: It was his DNA, among other evidence, that authorities say helped link Heuermann to the crimes.
Here's what we know about his wife, their life together, and the unexpected role she played in the case.
Heuermann and Ellerup married in April 1996, the suspect said in a 2018 deposition. Since then, they lived in Heuermann's red and green childhood home in the Long Island suburb of Massapequa Park with their daughter and Ellerup's stepson. Heuermann.
But despite their long stay in the neighborhood, and although Heuermann's life was long rooted in the same community, neighbors knew few details about the family.
Neighbors described the house as creepy and the family as distant, according to the Long Island Press, a monthly magazine serving Long Island.
“The family is very caring and calm,” neighbor Frankie Musto told the publication. “We never saw anything suspicious.”
In his 2018 statement, Heuermann said he had been married once before. That marriage, he said, lasted three years and they had no children.
When the victims were first discovered, authorities recovered locks of faded hair, but DNA testing at the time failed to provide the answers investigators were hoping for.
Technological improvements soon helped to produce results.
Hair now believed to belong to Ellerup, which had presumably been carried unintentionally by the suspect in his clothing, was found on or near all three victims, prosecutors alleged in the bail application, citing DNA evidence.
That DNA came from 11 bottles inside a trash can outside Heuermann's home, the court document says. Authorities had been monitoring Heuermann and his family for months after they identified him as a suspect in early 2022, and during that time they collected DNA samples from items the family threw away.
Although her hair was found with the victims, Ellerup and her daughter were traveling when the murders were committed and Heuermann was “alone in the tri-state area,” Suffolk County District Attorney Ray Tierney said at a conference. press release last summer.
“It's very significant to the extent that it narrows it down to him,” criminal defense attorney Joey Jackson told CNN's Jake Tapper of the finding. “If the suspect's wife is out of town, then why would her hair be there if he is in town?”
Suffolk County authorities say DNA evidence also links Heuermann to a male hair found in the burlap sack where a victim's remains were found.
Harrison told CNN last summer that he was informed that once authorities told Ellerup and his daughter about the crimes Heuermann is accused of, the two were “shocked, disgusted, embarrassed.”
Their reaction, he said, is why he believes they were unaware of what he was doing.
“But time will tell,” he added. “And once again, there are still many more questions to ask family and friends.”
CNN has made multiple attempts to contact Heuermann's wife and daughter.
Lawyers representing Ellerup said last July that she and her family “are going through a devastating time in their lives” and ask for privacy.
“The sensitive nature of her husband's arrest is taking an emotional toll on his immediate and extended family, especially his elderly relatives,” said a statement from law firm Macedonio & Duncan. “EM. Ellerup does not wish to comment further and she has asked the public and the press to respect the family's privacy at this time.”
Following his arrest, Heuermann was remanded in custody without bail. He pleaded not guilty through his attorney.
